


Meet Me in the Church

by purple_bookcover



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Church Sex, M/M, POV Second Person, Vampires, felix bday week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:22:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22912420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: You return. You always do.And I watch over you.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 13
Kudos: 25
Collections: Felix Birthday Week 2020





	1. The Watcher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix watches over Ashe, who is on a holy quest to save the town from vampires.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for day 7 of "Felix BDay Week," free day!
> 
> For this, I just let loose. Second person perspective. Vampire fuck in/near a church. And, hey, it turns out it's Ash Wednesday! I didn't know that when I wrote this, but perhaps my Catholic upbringing is just embedded in my skull somewhere. 
> 
> #
> 
> For this and the rest of Felix BDay Week, I am doing ASHELIX WEEK. I am posting 7 new fics. On Ashe Week (in March), I'll be posting Chapter 2 of ALL seven fics. So come back then for the conclusion to these stories.

You return. You always do. 

I shouldn't watch, but I know this forest. I've seen the trees go from saplings to towering spires. I've watched the boulders tumble down the hillsides and settle in the dirt, watched the moss spread over their hulking shoulders. I know what lurks in the dark. 

You, though, you walk the winding path between the boughs as though nothing can harm you. And it can't. But only because I am here. Watching. As I always do. 

You are beautiful. So beautiful it hurts to look. Your hair reflects the moonlight in silvery slivers. Your freckles are entire constellations. If the unnatural, grotesque state of my body is good for anything, it is good for this, for picking out the pinpricks of light that illuminate your cheeks, more brilliant than any starlight. 

I follow as you meander through the woods. So carefree, despite the lengthening shadows. As though you never considered what hides within the dark, never felt any fear of the unknown. 

You reach the church without incident. Do you find it cliché? Pathetic? You should, but I suspect no such petty thoughts cross your mind. 

It is a jagged tooth of stone in the forest. The trees are pushing their slow way inside through the shattered windows and broken doors. You pause just past the ruin of the fence that once framed it, those damnable green eyes scanning the tombstones. I hear your voice, soft, so very soft as you pray for the souls of people you've never met. 

I struggle not to laugh. Part of me thinks that if you met half the bastards you wouldn't be praying for them; the other part knows that's not true. You'd pray for your worst enemy. You'd pray for me. 

I consider putting a tombstone there for myself, carving my name into the rock. Then, next time, I could hear you whispering my name instead. “Felix.” What I'd give to hear you say it like that, concerned and hopeful and kind. 

You take the steps slowly, caution finally tempering your movements. You have a bag slung across your chest. You reach into it, taking out a vial. Perhaps holy water. Perhaps garlic. Perhaps a tiny cross blessed and sealed in glass. 

It doesn't matter. None of them will work. After all, I'm still following you, aren't I?

I watch through the holes in the roof as you pace between the pews and approach the decrepit altar. There, you kneel, removing several other objects from your bag. Now, I can see your preparations clearly: A rosary, a cross, a clove of garlic, and, indeed, a vial of water I assume is “holy.” 

I get a little lost in watching you. You work deliberately, arraying your warding objects before you, breaking up the garlic to complete the circle, clasping your hands in prayer, bowing your head so your silver hair falls around your face. My hands itch to brush it back, tuck it behind your ear. I know just how it would feel. 

My reverie nearly costs you your life. Well, not really. But you think so.

Something streaks through the dark, so quick even I can barely see it. It's on you before I can react. I hear you scream, hear your wards and vials and holy objects go skittering across the floor. 

I leap down from the roof, dust rising in a cloud when I hit the ground three stories below. The shock runs through my legs, the pain a pleasant reminder that I can still feel anything at all. But such a fall is nothing for this wicked body and I recover in an instant, dashing through the dark. 

Something has you by the neck and it's pinning you to the floor, snarling and drooling. You put up an admirable struggle, kicking and scratching, keeping its razor-like teeth from your throat. But you don't understand how strong you are, use only a portion of what you could, what you ought. Its teeth, long as knives and slick with saliva, creep closer to your skin. 

I am there in an instant, yanking it away from you. Surprise gives me the advantage. I pull a woman, what was once a woman, off you and throw it across the room. It growls and snarls, but can do little as it tumbles, striking the far wall. It is thin, hardly more than skin stretched over bone, its hair long and lank and wispy. It is more animal than human at this point, though in truth it is neither. 

You are making surprised noises, asking questions, but there's no time for that. I dash at the thing recovering across the room, pin it to the wall by its wretched neck, gripping, twisting, watching its eyes grow large as its tongue lolls out of its mouth. I can't kill it so simply, but there is a raw satisfaction in watching it suffer for harming you. 

Your voice changes. A shriek, a crash. The beast in my hand manages to smirk through its agony. I crush its throat in my hand, leaving it wheezing on the floor as I spin. 

There is another one, this one a man, or man-like. And it has you. It has you on the floor and its teeth are at your neck and even with all the unnatural speed of this body I won't reach you in time.

I try anyway, moving so fast that when I reach it all I can do is grab and let my momentum carry us both away from you. We wrestle and grapple, fighting for control. Your blood drips from its mouth and onto my face as it leers over me. I surge, flipping us so it is on its back. Your cross is nearby. I grab it, raise my hand. It catches my wrist, but I use my knee to knock the breath from its useless lungs. Then I stab the cross down, right through its miserable heart. 

I don't need to breathe, but I've been doing it for so long out of habit, out of nostalgia. When I rise from the body of the dying wretch, I am panting, panting with fear and hate and revulsion. I would kill it again if I could, kill it a thousand times for daring to touch you. The other wretch wheezes, but when I turn to look at it, it wisely flees, limping and stumbling.

I hear you whimpering and my anger dissolves. When I kneel beside you, you are pale, shaking, touching your neck in terror. Blood paints your fingers crimson. So much. And it just keeps coming. Your eyes are wide. You don't understand. You believe you are dying. 

I rip my shirt and tie the fabric around the wound, pressing hard until the bleeding slows, until I can place more cloth there and make you feel secure. You are a little less frantic, but no less confused. You're watching me, and I remember that your blood is on my face as well as my hands. 

“You'll be OK,” I say. 

“What are you?” you say. Your voice is quivering. 

“Shh,” I say. “You're tired from the blood loss. Rest.” 

And you do, just because I asked you to.

#

I leave your little tokens at the church. You meant to save the town, to cast away the demons, but you went about it all wrong.

I have a home of sorts in the forest, just behind the church. It may once have been an extension of sorts for the chapel. It is small, a single room, no kitchen, mostly just a bed and a pile of clothes and necessities. You are resting on the bed and I am standing against the wall mere steps away, watching. Perhaps it's impolite, but I don't get to see you from this close very often. You're sleeping peacefully, your breaths lovely little whispers on your lips, your hair brushed gently away from your face. 

It was almost too much, moving your hair aside. My hands trembled as I did it. I worried I'd get lost, trapped. 

That is why I stand against the wall, why I fold my arms, why when you wake with a start I don't move toward you to comfort you. 

“Where?” you say. Your words emerge scratchy. All over again, I revile the foul beasts who scarred the sweet melody of your voice.

“You are safe,” I say. 

You struggle to sit up, squint at me through the dark. “Who are you?”

My chest seizes, tightens to bursting. The pain traces familiar fractures, no less biting for the passage of time. 

“Felix,” I say, mostly to hear you say it. 

And you do. “Felix,” you muse, tasting my name in your mouth, rolling it around. Is it sweet? Bitter? Familiar? I want to reach into your mouth and find out myself. 

“Where am I?” you say. “'Safe' isn't really an answer.”

“Not far from the church,” I say. 

Your eyes widen. “What happened?” You process it all on your own, touching the bandages over your neck, finding the pile of your belongings sitting on the floor, piecing it together. Then you look to me and the expression in your eyes is too horrible to bear. “What are you?” 

There it is, the oldest wound of all, the one always ready to tear back open. I don't bother to answer. I can't. 

“Did you kill Garret?” you say.

“No.”

“What about Matilda? Frances? Andrew?”

“No,” I say. 

“Did ... did the other two do it?” you ask. 

“Probably,” I say. 

“But you...” I can hear the pieces falling into place in your mind. I brace. “You are the same as them, aren't you?”

“Yes,” I say. 

A pause. I can't see you anymore. I'm fixated on my own feet. 

“The livestock,” you say.

I just nod.

“But not people?” 

“Not ... recently.” What does “recently” feel like for you, I wonder. 

“Why did you help me?”

I laugh. I know few questions more confounding, more horrible, more tangled and fraught. 

“Are you going to ... to eat me?” you say.

I laugh again. It feels strange in my throat. “No,” I say. 

You're watching me with a mingling of horror and curiosity. I hate that look. Hate it more than twelve lifetimes could contain. 

“Then why?” you say. 

I am weak. I always have been. I step toward you, I kneel before the bed you're on, place myself at your side. You don't recoil. You probably should. 

“Because I love you,” I say, just to hear it, just to watch the way it washes over your face, lights your eyes, brushes across your freckled cheeks like wind on a still day. 

You watch me for such a long time that I begin to wonder if you've heard me at all. Then, you say, “I believe you.” 

You reach out, fingertips grazing my cold skin and hollow cheeks. I close my eyes, imprinting the sensation into my memory. Your fingers keep moving though. I look at you with surprise when they reach my mouth, when they gently part my lips. You touch my teeth. Perhaps you are searching for razors like the ones that harmed you, but they are ordinary for now, retracted. 

You are trusting, unafraid, as you put your fingers in my mouth, sliding them over my teeth, touching my tongue. You truly do believe me. Even when I close my mouth, you do not flinch, seem unafraid as I suck on the finger in my mouth, licking to taste your skin. 

I release your finger. Then you slide to the edge of the bed, bending over to kiss me where I kneel. 

It lasts a breath, a heartbeat, an instant – and entire lifetimes. 

“You taste like death,” you say. 

I don't respond. I dare not confirm your revulsion. 

“I should hate it,” you say. 

“It's OK if you do.”

“I don't though. Why? Is it ... are you ... can you compel me to feel this way?”

“No,” I say. Even if I could, I'd sooner make you hate me, convince you to run screaming.

But you don't. Of course you don't. You kiss me again, as though searching for answers, as though painting in a memory one color at a time. I didn't expect this, wouldn't have asked for it, dared not hope for it. But now that you're here, smelling like earth and plants and living, growing things, I am intoxicated. 

“Why do you love me?” you ask, holding my face in your hands, peering into my eyes. 

I don't answer.

“Will you harm me?” you say.

“No.”

“Will you keep me here?”

“No.” 

“What will happen, then, if I sleep with you right now?” 

“Nothing,” I say. 

I have never lied to you.

#

Should I describe it all again? Should I pretend I've never seen you flushed and breathless beneath me? Perhaps it is worth the indulgence, just this once.

You cannot know how lovely you are, how bright your lips become after I kiss them, how brilliant your freckles look when your whole face is blushing. 

I want nothing. I say it is because you are recovering. In truth, I am greedy, greedy to sate my need to explore every bit of your skin, to touch everywhere I can reach, to graze my sharp teeth along your neck, your shoulders, your hips. It is everything. 

And you, you respond so eagerly. You don't fear my teeth, you don't worry that my hands won't release you, that my kisses will steal your last breath. You need not, but I'd understand if you did. Anyone else would find me horrible, as they should. But you? You gaze up at me through a haze of adoration that carves through my chest and leaves me gasping. 

I cannot linger near your face. I must focus on your body instead. Yet even here, you betray yourself. The gooseflesh that prickles down your abdomen as I kiss it, the hand you wind through my hair, the way you lift your hips to fit your body perfectly against mine. 

You aren't even afraid when I have your cock in my mouth and my fingers in your body. You writhe and whimper with pleasure. You shiver. You clutch at my hair and whisper my name and tremble against my tongue. I tease. I draw it out. Just to hear my name in your mouth a few more times. 

When I finally release you, you shout it, not a prayer, but a curse rasped at the sky, unholy and sharp-edged and broken. Your cross juts from the body of a beast in a decrepit church while your cum slides warm down my throat. 

Perhaps this is not the holy quest you envisioned, but it's holy to me, if that's any consolation. I will worship this memory, bright and stark and precious even as I come up for air, curl against you, put my face in your sweet, earthy hair. 

You offer. Of course you offer. But I decline, satisfied in ways you can't fathom. Anything more would be grotesque; anything more would dilute the moment. I trap the memory against my chest, hugging you against me as though your body pressed to mine can keep this night from dissipating, can keep it from slipping away like sand between my fingers. 

It will.

It always does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!
> 
> Join the [Ashelix discord](https://discord.gg/cjFuCx) to hear my incoherent screeching about my beloved rarepair! (Ask me for link if it's expired!)


	2. Holy Quest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashe gets distracted while trying to save the town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ashe Week, day 7, free day! Let's get some more vampire fuckin' happening.

The next time I see you, it's in the church. You fuck me against the altar, my hands pressed to the stone, my head bowed as though I'm praying. But it's only your name that passes my lips, repeated like the refrains of a rosary.

“Felix, Felix.”

It shouldn't feel so natural. You shouldn't fit so well against my tongue, inside me. But here you are, your teeth at my shoulder, your head pressed against me like I'm the altar you brace against.

“Felix.”

All I can do is pray.

I came here for a reason, I think distantly. I had a purpose, a sacred duty, a holy quest. But I can't seem to remember what it was as you nip at my neck and press so hard and sweet inside me that I cry at the ceiling, my voice bounding through the hollow church. 

You finally respond, a soft echo at my ear: “Ashe.” 

This is tenuous and fragile, this strange, unspoken meeting of ours. In the fleeting peace of the moments where our breaths and hearts calm, I can pretend it is something less strange and fraught. But I get the impression you couldn't pretend even if you wanted to. 

“We can't do this anymore,” you say before we can catch our breaths. 

“I didn't come here for you,” I say.

Your laugh is short and bitter. You are still behind me, your chest against my back, your hand caressing my ass even as you profess that this will be the last time, the end of this bizarre affair. 

We both taste the lie sizzling in the air. 

It's like madness, like a battle haze, like a drug. I feel myself slipping away as you hold me, your face against my neck, your breaths so deep it's as though you're memorizing the scent of my sweat. 

“You came here for them, didn't you, _vampire hunter_?” Your mockery is thick as syrup. “Yet here you are, fucking one of the beasts you pursue.” 

“You've done most of the fucking, so far,” I say. 

Even recently spent, I feel you twitch against me at that. 

Your in-drawn breath rakes through my hair. “It's been so long.” 

“A couple days is not exactly long.”

“That's not what I mean,” you say.

“Then tell me.” I turn in your hold, facing you now, our bodies so close I can hardly look into those glinting amber eyes. I've never really understood the term “terrifyingly lovely.” Not before now. But that's what you are. Sunken in, sharp in places like the teeth you dragged along my neck, harsh and pale and severe, eyes like flint attempting to spark. I shiver and harden all at once. 

And damn you, you know. You know you can use it against me, know you can yank me to your mouth and my meager protests will melt into moans. You know I'll fuck you right there on the floor and forget everything I've been meaning to say. 

_How do you know?_ I wonder, dimly, distantly, somewhere under the whimper I issue when you straddle my hips, slick up my cock and lower yourself onto me. 

Because fuck, you feel so good. You feel so, so good. And it's all I can do just to remember my own name as you bend forward and hiss it into my ear, tongue flicking out to graze my skin. 

I shift my hips. You grunt. Perhaps you weren't expecting that, perhaps I've finally managed to do something you didn't predict five steps back. 

Either way, your body rolls in response. Encouraged, I push into you again. I grope for your hips, but my hands are quivering and clumsy. I feel silky threads of hair on my chest and force my eyes open to see you hunching over me, one hand on your own cock as your hair spills forward like a blue-black veil concealing us from the world. I reach for it--how could I not? I'm only human, after all. It's like dew-dampened grass in my hands, like a slip of silk, like a breath of air on a moonlit night. 

You slow when I don't pull. You look down at me, something like fear on your face. Fear. I touch it, trying to understand, trying to construct your incongruous emotions into something coherent. 

“Does it hurt?” I say. 

“No,” you say. 

But still, there's something there, pain of a different sort, like the very sight of me cuts through you. You reach for my hand, remove it from your face, clutch it in yours. The kiss you lay upon my fingers, reserved, almost courtly, threatens to rip my heart from my chest. I'm more afraid than when we first met in this church and those beasts nearly killed me. 

Your hair hides your face as you bend forward, kissing and sucking at my neck. It is soft, but gooseflesh ripples down my body. I draw in a gasp as your teeth graze my skin. 

“Come on,” you say. “Fuck me.”

You move atop me and I cannot help but follow. Once again, my words are stolen by your body, by the ripples of pleasure blotting out all other thoughts from my mind. Soon, I'm swaying up into you, matching your body's movements, scratching at your back as you writhe. 

I squirm a hand between us to reach your cock. You gasp as though struck and your body clenches around me. 

I can feel it when your teeth emerge, lengthening against my neck. It should scare me, but I feel only excitement as those dual razors slide against my skin. Your tongue laps at my neck. My skin prickles. Then, finally, you bear down, sinking those terrifying, gleaming teeth into my neck. 

It is a quick incision, a bright burst of sweet pain. I arch up into it, hand tightening on your cock. Your teeth retract as you rasp against my skin. 

“Fuck.”

I use my free hand to press at your hips, urge you tighter against me, try to find a way to go deeper still. Your mouth covers the wound you've made. Pressure as you draw blood from my body and into yours. Pressure as I twitch inside you. Pressure as you somehow push down harder and squeeze me. 

All at once, the pressure releases. My body goes rigid. You arch to receive me and I feel warm wetness on my hand and chest. 

Your mouth is the last thing to relax in either of our bodies. You ease me out of you, but when you push up to your hands and knees, perched over me, your lips are rouged with my blood. Your tongue flicks out, reflexive, to lick the last dregs from your mouth. 

I sit up and this time I do pull on your hair, drawing your mouth to mine. You startle, go rigid. I barely get a taste before you jerk back. 

You scoot away, wiping at your mouth with the back of your hand. “No,” you say. 

“Why?”

Your jaw moves as you bite down on all you refuse to say. 

I reach for my neck, for the dual punctures quickly closing up. There is still a smear of blood. My fingertips come away blushing. 

“Ashe,” you say. 

“Why?”

I hold my fingertips before my mouth, a threat. 

You return, but only to hold my wrist, pull my fingers away from my lips. 

“You're scared I'll become like you,” I say. “You're scared I'll turn and I'll hate you for it. But I won't. I … I could … stay with you.” 

I might have stabbed you. I might have twisted a knife in your back and left you bleeding. You look at me as though you will crumble any moment. 

I lean toward you. You recoil, a flinch, but hold your ground. We are naked and sticky, but somehow none of that matters. I can see how hard you clench your teeth to hold back the answers to my questions.

“Why did you come here?” you say.

“To find the vampires hurting people,” I say. “To stop them. To save the town.”

Your smile drips with sarcasm, a blade coated in poison. “You don't understand what you're fighting.”

“Then tell me,” I say. “Help me understand.”

“No.” 

And that's it. You gather your clothing and leave me in the church. My prayers go unanswered.

#

I don't see you for days, then weeks. 

Not in the flesh. 

In my mind, you are always present. I drag up the image of your hair like a curtain around us, your molten eyes, your terrifying beauty. Your teeth. 

I touch myself while I think of you. It's a pale comfort, but the alternative is nothing, nothing but the coldness of your conspicuous absence. 

Sometimes, as I stroke myself, pretending it's you, imagining my hand is yours, I touch my neck. My fingers are nothing like the sweet prickle of your teeth, but they color the memory, give me a facsimile of sensation. One time, just one, I dig my nails into myself at the end, deeper than I intended, but the bite is so very pleasant. 

My fingertips come away dusted in red. It isn't much, a mere fleck, but you aren't here to stop me this time, so I bring it to my mouth, lick that blush off my fingertips, pretend I'm like you. Perhaps that's why it seems to taste so good.

And why I yearn for more.

#

I wake up with blood on my hands, on my arms, all the way up to my elbows. My nails are like claws, blood caked beneath them. I swallow and taste it in my mouth, sticky down my throat. 

“Please.” 

A whimper between sobs. 

My head jerks. There is a man crouched in the corner of a dark room. He hugs himself, quivers, watches me like he'd watch a hungry predator. 

“Please let me live,” he says.

I don't understand until I scan the rest of the room. There is a woman on the floor. She is still and limp like a doll. A trail of blood leads from her mangled throat across the floorboards and directly to me, to my red, dripping hands. 

“What...” I falter, unable to voice any of a dozen competing questions. 

The door to the home bursts open. You are there, a slip of shadow in the dark, storming through the room. 

The man cowers more tightly into the corner, but you do not go to him. You go to the woman on the floor, turning her over, examining the ragged wound on her throat. 

“Shit,” you hiss. 

You turn to me. 

“What...” I try again, but my voice is so fragile. 

My hands are shaking. You take one, heedless of the blood, and yank me to my feet. 

I am like a kite pulled along by a string. I run behind you. I don't even know where we're going. The dark forest closes in around us, blotting out the town, muffling the screams that spike through the still night. 

Finally, I find my voice. “What did I do?” I say. “What did I do?”

You do not answer. You tug me along, more urgent by the moment. Torchlight prickles the dark like angry red eyes. 

We don't stop until we return to the church. You drag me up to the rafters via a ladder you immediately kick away. We crouch among thatch and wood, hidden, at least for now. 

And that is where you finally look at me, appraise the blood splattered over my arms. You tear a strip off your shirt, wiping at my mouth with surprising tenderness. 

“It's my fault,” you mutter. 

“What did I do?” I say again, begging. 

You pause in wiping down my arms. You stroke my face, leave your hand softly against my neck. “It's not your fault,” you say. 

I can't seem to stop shaking. “I killed that woman. All that blood... Her blood...” 

“Shh,” you say. 

“What's going to happen? Why am I like this? Did I hurt anyone else?” 

You silence me with a kiss, but I can barely feel comforted by it now. 

“No,” you say. “You didn't hurt anyone else. It's not your fault.” 

“Felix, what am I? Why am I not like you? I don't even remember what happened, but you're always in control.” 

“I am.” 

“How? Why?”

“Because...” 

We hear the doors to the church pound open, see torchlight flickering far below. 

“It's here.”

“Where?”

“Damned if I know.” 

“We have to find it. It killed her.”

“How could this be?”

“Lying bastard.”

“Burn it.” 

This last silences all the rest. 

“Burn it,” the woman says again. “It will die or it will flee. In either case, we will have it.” 

You are on your feet before they can finish plotting. You take me by the hand, drag me back up. They must hear the commotion in the rafters because they're looking up by the time we clamber to the roof. 

They do not end up burning the church, having flushed us out of it. But they do fire arrows and fling rocks at us. You are struck more than once in your effort to keep me safe. 

The worst is the arrow that strikes your side as we run back into the dark of the forest. You grunt, stumble, but never stop moving. 

“Felix, we have to stop. You can't.”

But you just keep running, even as blood drips down your side. I can see it despite the dark. I can smell it. Feel it. I lick my lips, even as we stumble through the gloom, trying to outpace our demise. 

It is a long, long time before we stop. You collapse the moment we slow.

I help you lay against a fallen tree. You wheeze and grimace and wince. 

“What are we going to do about the arrow?” I say.

You yank it out without another word, even though it makes you groan with pain. You grit your teeth, but I can see how ghastly pale your face has gone. You're panting, clutching at your side to stem the bleeding, woozy even as you sit. 

“Felix,” I say, “please don't die.”

You laugh through the pain. “This won't kill me.” 

Then you yank me to your mouth, swift and surprising. In an instant, I am on my back with you straddling my hips once again. I cannot feel any excitement this time, not with the blood caked up my arms and trickling out of your body. 

You peer down at me, stroking my face, brushing my hair off my forehead. Even as I watch, your teeth elongate. 

“What are you doing?” I say. 

You bend down, but keep peering directly into my eyes, your thumb rubbing my cheek. 

“I'm like you, aren't I?” I say. “That's why you wouldn't answer when I asked. You knew. You knew I was already like this. Why didn't you tell me?” 

“You don't deserve to suffer for this.”

“But I ... I killed that woman.”

“She was not your first,” you say. “She won't be your last.”

“What does that mean?”

You lower to kiss me, slow, lingering. Despite it all, I want to stay here, your mouth pressed sweetly against mine, your scent all around me as we both suck in the breath of this moment. 

You move away, just enough so your mouth can tickle my neck. 

“I'll always be here,” you say. “I'll always watch. I'll always protect you. No matter how many lives it takes to get it right.” 

Then your teeth sink into my neck, deeper than before. When they retract, you suck, hard. I gasp. You're taking too much. You're taking all of it, everything that's left of me. I begin to struggle too late. You hold me down as you continue to drain me and all I can do is flail weakly in your grasp. 

The forest rocks around me, going hazy and indistinct. My eyes feel heavy; my body is leaden. I am falling, slipping away, drowning. Drowning even though I am empty, drained of nearly every ounce of blood I once contained. 

Your hold relents. My hands fall away, limp. My head lolls back when you sit up. Your lips are so beautiful, bright and crimson. You swim over me, terrifyingly lovely in the moonlight. My eyes are already fluttering, my mind trying to slip away into the dark. 

I blink. Next I know, you are carrying me, moving unhurried through the forest as my body drapes flaccidly in your arms. 

You've left just a trickle behind, just enough blood that I won't die. But I will sleep. I can feel it coming on already, a heavy, dark, smothering cloak of sleep like the lid of a tomb closing. 

And with that trickle, with that bare, fragile drip keeping me at the edge of life, I understand. 

“Just like before,” I say.

“Yes,” you say. 

“You,” I say. “Always.”

“Shh,” you say. “It's time to sleep.”

“I don't want to. I don't want to lose you.”

I can feel your smile in the way your hands tighten under me. “You won't,” you say. “I will be there, always, watching. I'm always watching. Every time.” 

I reach for you, but I can't quite reach your face. “I'll miss you.”

This time, I hear a soft breath of laughter. “You won't,” you say. “But I'll miss you. Terribly.”

“Why?” I say. “Why can't I stay ... with you?”

“It hurts you too much,” you say. “The things you have to do, the things we are. But I'll find a way, eventually. I've searched for lifetimes. I'm so close. So close. But until we can live freely, until it won't hurt you, I won't let you suffer.”

“You'll suffer.”

You pause, look down at me, and now I see that poisoned smile, a poison you drink willingly. 

You kiss my forehead and warmth spreads through me. The temptation to sleep is strong, so very strong, but I know that the moment it pulls me down is the moment I lose you. Again. 

“I'll see you when you wake,” you say. “My love.” 

Even as you issue that soft promise, that ragged whisper, the dark pulls me down, my body bloodless and exhausted. My eyes flutter shut. The dark blots out all else.

#

Why am I being held? Why am I so very weary? Why do the arms cradling me feel so warm and familiar and safe? I should be afraid. I don't know where I am. I don't know who's holding me. I don't know why my body aches so. There have been monsters plaguing the town. I shouldn't be out here late at night, alone. It's dangerous in this forest. 

They say monsters live here. 

I am too exhausted to fight. I sleep, but when I wake, I'll hunt the monsters, protect the people, save the town from the things lurking in the night. 

I am a vampire hunter, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!
> 
> Join the [Ashelix discord](https://discord.gg/cjFuCx) to hear my incoherent screeching about my beloved rarepair! (Ask me for link if it's expired!)


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